**spoiler alert** The first time I read Ethan Frome was in the ninth or tenth grade. I remember sitting in Mr. Guevremont’s American Lit class listeni**spoiler alert** The first time I read Ethan Frome was in the ninth or tenth grade. I remember sitting in Mr. Guevremont’s American Lit class listening to people drone on about how miserable everyone’s life is at the end of the book, especially Ethan’s. How pityingly we must feel for the man who has lost everything—and worse than that, has assumed in its place a smorgasbord of further let-downs. Ethan Frome is not even afforded the decency of remembering Mattie as she once was, but now has to endure—as punishment for his philanderin’ ways—a Mattie whose soul was crushed as completely as was her spine on the day those idiots went sledding. A Mattie who, let’s face it, we could just as well refer to as Zeena Part Deux.

“But that’s not fair!” 15 year-old Jason Morais countered. “This book portrays Zeena wretchedly, yet she has a husband who would rather suffer a crushed cranium than spend another day with her and must now spend the rest of her days caring for his mistress. Shouldn’t we feel more sorry for her than for anyone else?”

I give Mr. Guevremont credit for not responding the way he should have: “No you fucking moron, we shouldn’t.” But I suppose not saying what you really want to say is often the mark of a good teacher.

Reading this again as an adult, I have to admit there is not much room for interpretation here, at least not where Zeena’s concerned. Zenobia Frome is cold and wretched, her behavior toward Ethan being only the tip of the iceberg. She is also unkind to strangers, unwelcoming to visitors, and pretty vicious toward Mattie. I suppose someone could come along to argue (another 15 year-old, perhaps?) that Zeena’s cruelty toward Mattie is justified, or at least explainable, by the mere fact that Mattie consumes all of Ethan’s attention, but I don’t buy it. There is no contextual basis for Zeena being a jealous person. She has very little regard for Ethan’s feelings one way or the other, and in fact might even derive pleasure from knowing of his being lovestruck, because Zeena thrives on misery. It is what gets her up in the morning. When she is not surrounding herself with those on whom life has taken its biggest dumps, she wallows in miseries of her own, real or imagined. Knowing her husband was in love with Mattie is perfect for Zeena because it provides yet another means of nurturing what I like to call her “anguish fetish.” The whole sledding situation is another contribution to her porn stash. Remember Sartre’s No Exit? That is the picture of paradise for Zenobia Frome.

I am still friends with Mr. Guevremont on Facebook and on Goodreads (Hi, Mr. G!), and I think if he were reading this he would agree that my Zenobia defense back in high school probably stemmed more from my youthful naïveté than from any kind of narcissistic need to express vocal dissension. But either way, 15 year-olds can be real argumentative pricks sometimes, can’t they? Thank god I’ve outgrown that phase....more

So, this book. Ostensibly about a geriatric dude who goes fishing, The Old Man and the Sea covers way more bases than that. OneHi!!!!!

I’m drunk again.

So, this book. Ostensibly about a geriatric dude who goes fishing, The Old Man and the Sea covers way more bases than that. One could say it is a book whose themes include “the solitude of man” or, um… “one being pitted against the world.” Or maybe even a “powerlessness against nature” or whatever. And all of these things may be true, but I think I would have enjoyed this touching novella even if it didn’t capture those thematic bases. Of course, I only say that because I enjoyed the book to the extent that I did, and had it not employed those themes into its narrative perhaps I wouldn’t have liked it so much. Who the fuck knows? But I did and here’s (I think) one of the reasons why: Hemingway writes like a simpleton. I remember this sort of stripped down, bare bones writing from books like For Whom the Bell Tolls and stories like Hills Like White Elephants (which is one of my favorite short stories ever, by the way), and it works just as well here, if not for different reasons.

Santiago is an old man who fishes out of his skiff somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico. Havana is mentioned, so maybe this takes place in Cuba? Although 90% of the story takes place in the ocean so it doesn’t even really freaking matter. The point is, Santiago is an old man who fishes out of his skiff somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico. He lives alone and has seemingly one close friend, a young boy named...actually I forget his name. That’s really weird. I just finished this book yesterday and I already forgot the kid’s name?

OH!

Manolin! Yes, that’s right. Manolin. Anyway, Manolin’s his only friend and there’s a level of mutual respect and admiration that exists between the two characters which is highlighted by the very understatedness of Hemingway’s simpleton writing. The boy wants to go with the old man (oh, who cares about names anyway) except the boy’s parents have decided maybe he shouldn’t hang out with the old man, and not because the old man is creepy or anything which you’d think might be a bit concerning but apparently nope. It’s the fact that the old man hasn’t caught a fish in four months. Which is a super long time not to catch a fish when all you do in life is catch fish.

So the old man goes out into the sea by himself and breaks his fishless streak by landing himself the biggest marlin ever, and there’s a lot of internal struggle that occurs here, which is brilliant—there’s self-doubt which creeps into the old man’s psyche and is replaced by “fake it ‘til you make it” confidence, which then circles back into more self-doubt. There’s an overwhelming sense of loneliness, both physical (being leagues away from shore) and emotional (the old man misses the boy BUT NOT IN A CREEPY WAY), and there’s also this really beautiful union with nature that occurs as the old man tries to land the fish. He recognizes the fish as his foe but ultimately becomes “one” with it as he begins to identify it as an extension of himself. It’s all very layered for a guy whose sentences contain seven words or fewer.

I won’t say what happens after he catches the marlin because I’m almost wondering if even saying that is spoilerish but boy howdy do you guys want to know what happens after he catches that marlin or what??! Well, then maybe you should read this book.

I’d also like to say that Weinz is wrong about margaritas being for pussies. That is all....more

WAIT A SECOND. Doesn’t Sting refer to Humbert Humbert as the “old man in that book by Nabokov”? If so, then maybe he ought to have reread Lolita beforWAIT A SECOND. Doesn’t Sting refer to Humbert Humbert as the “old man in that book by Nabokov”? If so, then maybe he ought to have reread Lolita before opening his big fat mouth. Because that “old man,” Mr. Fields of Gold, happens to be only in his 30s.

Remember when we used to have live TV and stations would air previews for a program they were trying to promote? Have you ever then gone and watched tRemember when we used to have live TV and stations would air previews for a program they were trying to promote? Have you ever then gone and watched that program only to discover that the preview was kind of misleading?

Well, the previews for this book are wicked misleading. Everything about it—the jacket cover, the book description...ok, maybe just the jacket cover and the book description—led me to believe this was a story about a World War II soldier lost at sea. And yes, there is certainly a section of the book that chronicles the experiences of a few Army Air Force personnel who become stranded on a raft in the South Pacific following the crash of their bomber, but the scope of the narrative encompasses much more than that. In fact, the “raft stuff” doesn’t even constitute the most compelling parts of this book. So what gives, Random House? Why you be unnecessarily deceitful?

What’s appreciable about Hillenbrand, who by the way suffers from a chronically debilitating disease which often leaves her confined to her home for days at a time (I don’t know why I felt the need to mention that), is her ability to relay a story that depicts a person at what we imagine to be his worst, only to reveal slowly a situation of progressively deepening madness, and she accomplishes this without running out of adjectival modifiers that would otherwise be needed to bring the reader’s jaw closer and closer to the floor. In other words, Hillenbrand knows how to tell a story, and this book, a biography of Olympic runner Louis Zamperini, which focuses on his life in a Japanese POW camp, is a prime example....more

I used to really enjoy short story collections. I used to read scary ones in elementary school, depressing ones in high school, and I even read trippyI used to really enjoy short story collections. I used to read scary ones in elementary school, depressing ones in high school, and I even read trippy ones in college (thinking I was cool). But sometime during my post-college years, my interest in them began to wane. I don’t know whether this can be ascribed to getting older, but I do know that I now get frustrated with short stories. The time I invest in the setting and the characters, acclimating to the storytelling style and pacing—well, there’s not enough return on my investment. I just don’t have time for it anymore.

Thankfully, this book is not a collection of short stories. Rather, it is a single story told in a collection, and the collection holds together nicely. Let the Great World Spin is actually the story of a particular place and time: New York City, August 1974. It is about the lawlessness and drudgery of the city’s inhabitants, it is about the angst of war, but it is also about those shining moments of hope and human achievement that pierce the angst and shred the drudgery to pieces. It is about two characters in particular, one real and one fictional, who serve as a sort of lamppost for a city steeped in darkness and self-loathing. Interestingly, both characters are outsiders—new arrivals from foreign soil—as if pulled in by a city that needs just a little bit of light, please.

There is plenty to like about this book, too: its coherency, its writing style, its characters. But once again, I expose myself as a sucker for imagery. McCann uses metaphor like nobody’s business and I fricken loved it. I ended up reading this for our new book club on Goodreads, which I started with a bunch of friends as an excuse to squeeze even more books onto my reading list. And I have to admit, this was an excellent first pick.

Three-star books are always difficult to review, aren’t they? They are difficult for me, mostly because I am sI write this review under severe duress.

Three-star books are always difficult to review, aren’t they? They are difficult for me, mostly because I am so dispassionate about them. It’s much easier to review something you love, or something you hate, rather than something you’ve half-forgotten before you even get to your local library’s return box.

So this book is fine. Fine. It’s the story of a young German girl caught in the path of the advancing Nazi regime during World War II. For many German villagers in the late 30s and early 40s, the Third Reich was like a quiet glacier, slowly encroaching on their lives—it moved languidly enough that disaster seemed never truly imminent (there is always plenty of time to get out of the way), yet it had enough momentum to churn to pulp anything that was unfortunate enough to meet its frothing jaws.

What annoyed me about this book, however, was its distracting style of storytelling. It is told from the point-of-view of the Grim Reaper, the personification of death. I would have actually been okay with this except Death is a grating little sonofabitch. He pretends to keep a distance from the German girl whose story he’s telling, representing himself as a disinterested party whose job is simply to harvest souls from their lifeless hosts, but over time he becomes clearly vested in her story, and for this he is a failure. I mean, if death and taxes are the only two things I can count on, and the IRS is a bullshit government arm that can’t find its asshole with a flashlight, then I need to be able to depend on Death not being a loser.

That said, I think this book is important for its one shining success, which is to remind us that civilian populations of even aggressor countries are innocent victims. Try to keep this in mind the next time your idiot friend says something like, “Dude, we should totally just bomb the fuck out of [insert Middle Eastern country here].”

My cousin told me I had to review this book or she would sic the Andover Ladies of Literature on me and I do not wish to scuffle with those broads....more

Experiencing Mrs. Dalloway is like being a piece of luggage on an airport conveyor belt, traversing lazily through a crowd of passengers, over and aroExperiencing Mrs. Dalloway is like being a piece of luggage on an airport conveyor belt, traversing lazily through a crowd of passengers, over and around and back again, but with the added bonus of being able to read people’s thoughts as they pass; this one checking his flight schedule, that one arguing with his wife, the one over there struggling with her cart, bumping into those arguing and checking. For the most part, the ride is smooth as Woolf transitions from one consciousness to another. But at times, I find myself falling off the conveyor belt. Whether this is a result of my own inabilities or whether Woolf’s dreamy style leads me naturally astray into my own wanderings, I do not know. But I do know that the effort to get back onto her belt are handsomely rewarded.

In short, this novel contains some of the most beautiful writing I’ve ever seen in print e-ink (welcome to the 21st century, Mrs D). But although quoting long passages in a Goodreads review is not usually my modus operandi, I feel I must do so here just to demonstrate my point. Have you ever had your mind so preoccupied with “stuff” that sometimes a passing comment triggers a strange feeling of not quite right–ness, a feeling which stems from the ability of your subconscious to somehow absorb the comment even while the conscious part of your brain has not yet had time to process it? This happens to me all the time, and that nagging feeling persists until I find time to reflect on what has caused it. Here Woolf captures the moment perfectly:

But—but—why did she suddenly feel, for no reason that she could discover, desperately unhappy? As a person who has dropped some grain of pearl or diamond into the grass and parts the tall blades very carefully, this way and that, and searches here and there vainly, and at last spies it there at the roots, so she went through one thing and another; no, it was not Sally Seton saying that Richard would never be in the Cabinet because he had a second-class brain (it came back to her); no, she did not mind that; nor was it to do with Elizabeth either and Doris Kilman; those were facts. It was a feeling, some unpleasant feeling, earlier in the day perhaps; something that Peter had said, combined with some depression of her own, in her bedroom, taking off her hat; and what Richard had said had added to it, but what had he said? There were his roses. Her parties! That was it! Her parties! Both of them criticised her very unfairly, laughed at her very unjustly, for her parties. That was it! That was it!

Besides shedding light on my own strange neurosis, I think this passage also reveals something interesting about Clarissa Dalloway. Why do Peter’s comments about her being the perfect hostess bother her so much? Mrs. Dalloway often claims to be fortunate to have married a man who allows her to be independent, and to be grateful to have avoided a catastrophic marriage to one who would have stifled her. But to me, these are just rationalizations for her decision to marry someone with whom she does not share the kind of intimacy that she might have otherwise had. In a way, her parties have taken the place of that intimacy, though it is an intimacy on her terms—she is able to enjoy the company of her high society friends while still keeping them at a comfortable enough distance to shield them from learning too much about her. When Peter gently mocks her parties, it annoys her because it invariably results in her having to reconcile the sacrifices she has made in exchange for her current lifestyle.

Another noteworthy aspect of Woolf’s writing is her acute description of post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD was not formally recognized until the 1970s, and even though documentation of symptoms was common in the 1940s when World War II veterans were being treated for “mental disturbances,” the fact that Woolf delves into this subject as early as 1925 is pretty profound. Back then, shell shock meant that you were suffering from a form of “exhaustion,” as if veterans of the Great War were no worse off than Britney Spears after a few too many nights out. In this regard, Septimus is a truly tragic character, a victim of a time and place without the resources to help him. His mental anguish seems also to mirror the sufferings of the unrelated Mrs. Dalloway. In fact, despite crossing paths in only the most abstract of ways, Clarissa and Septimus have quite a bit in common. They both struggle to balance their private lives against the need for social inclusion, they both internalize their emotions at the expense of personal relationships, and they both end up having to make difficult choices (albeit with drastically different outcomes) about their respective futures.

It’s true. Mrs. Dalloway offers remarkable insight into its characters and is certainly worth the effort. My only question is: does this conveyor belt stop here, or will it take me To the Lighthouse?

[September 2012 Update]A recording of me reading this review can be found here....more

This is going to sound a little weird, but throughout my reading of The Warmth of Other Suns, which is primarily about the migration of black AmericanThis is going to sound a little weird, but throughout my reading of The Warmth of Other Suns, which is primarily about the migration of black Americans from the Jim Crow South to western and northern U.S. cities during a large portion of the 20th century, I kept thinking about my upper-middle-class white high school biology teacher, Mrs. Ferry. Mrs. Ferry had a pretty significant impact on the direction my life took—she was a vibrant older woman who demanded a lot from her students, and those qualities, combined with her sudden death mid-year, sparked my lifelong interest in science. But one of the things I’ll always remember about her is a single conversation we had about her experiences living in Alabama in the 1950s. She talked about segregation and inequality, about economic disparity, and about the brutal examples of injustice she had witnessed personally. I listened to everything she said, but being a 15 year-old at the time, I wasn’t able to completely assimilate those horrors or understand what kinds of long-term effects Jim Crow would have on the black people who lived under its harsh rule. So in many ways, this book filled in some of the gaps for me.

If nothing else, Isabel Wilkerson is thorough. She covers the exodus of blacks from the Deep South beginning with the First World War right up through the end of the Civil Rights Movement, and even slightly beyond (as its effects were not necessarily immediate in certain Southern strongholds). Because this pattern of migration lasted for several generations, it was difficult to “see it” while it was happening, and most of its participants were virtually unaware that they were part of any statistical shift in black American residency, but in the end, six million black people left the South during these years. And while Jim Crow is arguably the chief (and perhaps even the sole) reason for this migration, the backgrounds, experiences, and outcomes of these migrants ranged as widely as one might expect considering the movement’s longevity.

Wilkerson focuses on three biographies to describe the migration, each subject hailing from a different Southern state, each migrating in a different decade, and each carrying with him a different set of circumstances that factored into his decision to leave, yet they were all (spiritually) united in their desire to extricate themselves from a situation for which they saw no viable future. The move itself wasn’t easy for any of them, and often times the cities to which they migrated, while being free of government-sanctioned segregation, were still riddled with racism and injustice. Overall, this book did a lot to explain why some cities, and even some sections of those cities became predominantly black, and it was by no means a coincidence that they lay along primary railroad routes out of the South. More than that, it did a lot to explain how those from Georgia and Florida migrated mostly to Boston and New York, those from Alabama and Mississippi moved to cities like Detroit and Chicago, and those from Louisiana and Texas went to Los Angeles and other West Coast cities.

While the logistics of black migration are interesting, and I was reminded of how awful conditions were for those living in the Jim Crow South, not to mention the difficulties that persisted even for the ones who left, Wilkerson tended to repeat herself a great deal. And because she focused on the lives of the three migrants in particular, her story did not end with the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but continued following these characters’ lives, the trajectories of which would become more anecdotal in nature and less “representative” of their migrant generation, well into the 1990s. It is clear she became attached to these people emotionally, which is certainly not a bad thing, but it is what caused it to drag a bit for me, even though I ordinarily find myself more interested in the human interest aspect of history. Regardless, The Warmth of Other Suns is solidly researched and serves as an important tool for better understanding the trials and tribulations of black Americans in the 20th century, trials that are altogether human, yet which I had not otherwise been exposed to outside of my Rhode Island prep school upbringing....more

I stalled so hard on this book. Mostly because it’s terrible, but also because my life is insane right now and I’m finding it hard to concentrate on aI stalled so hard on this book. Mostly because it’s terrible, but also because my life is insane right now and I’m finding it hard to concentrate on anything.

(But mostly because it’s terrible.)

I think people love this book because of the way it makes them feeeeeel. It’s a highly romanticized account of a family of settlers in a magical town known as something (I forget what because I don’t care). But nothing really…happens. And while some of my favorite books are ones in which stuff doesn’treallyhappen, those other books have characterization or relatable internal dialogue or some other component with a depth that makes reading it worthwhile, whereas this book doesn’t delve much beyond the surface of things and seems only to rely on a kind of quirkiness to make its characters appear interesting when in fact, no they are not. I had similar issues with Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated, which is probably why I didn’t care for that book very much, either.

Anyway, sorry to all my friends who liked this book. I still love you even though I think you’re cray....more

I am what some might call a pussy hiker. I do genuinely enjoy a leisurely stroll in the “mountains” of Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire. I likI am what some might call a pussy hiker. I do genuinely enjoy a leisurely stroll in the “mountains” of Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire. I like the pretty views. I always bring my conveniently-sized L.L. Bean backpack ($39.95 from the Kittery Outlets) so I have a place for my camera and cell phone. But by early afternoon, I would like to be done, please. I would like to be done and sitting at a booth in a pub with my burger and beer. Camping is certainly worthy of consideration, but here’s the deal: I don’t do rain. In light of the fact that weather reports are unreliable beyond a 48-hour window (and even that is pushing it in New England), it is unlikely I would ever camp for more than a two-night stay. Oh, and if I were to camp, I would like it to be at a site that has free Wi-Fi.

What this amounts to is that the Appalachian Trail, endearingly referred to by those hiking it as “the AT,” will never be anything more to me than a lovely little map.

(click to enlarge)

BUT. I am glad for gung-ho people like Bryson and his chubby checker friend Katz who did walk “the AT” and are kind enough to let me know what I am missing. As it turns out, I am not missing much. This is not to downplay the extraordinarity of a 2,200-mile trail of wilderness running from Georgia to Maine, a trail that takes the average thru-hiker six months to complete, but in terms of day-to-day variation, it is basically a shitload of trees followed by another shitload of trees.

For me, this book makes a better argument for the day hike. There are many parts of the trail I would enjoy, including the Smoky Mountains, the Shenandoah Valley, and the Delaware Water Gap. Like Bryson, though, I am a people person, and I enjoy my simple human comforts. I would like to see these areas without having to make an extended departure from civilization. Why can’t I have both—my nature and my nurture? Fortunately for me, almost a full third of the Appalachian Trail is in New England, so maybe I can have it all—because I think if there is one thing I’ve learned from Bryson’s experience, it is that I don’t have to suffer through long days of cold rain and hungry nights to enjoy what the Appalachian Trail has to offer....more

Sorry, that was annoying. But it’s almost as if Erik Larson wrote two really short books—one about the 1893 WoThis book is two, two, two books in one!

Sorry, that was annoying. But it’s almost as if Erik Larson wrote two really short books—one about the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition and another about the murder spree of Dr. H. H. Holmes—and then shoved them together to create a single story. The result isn’t bad, and I think Larson is successful at maintaining clean seams between the two narratives, but it’s hard to argue these two occurrences are anything but abstractedly related. Yes, Holmes lived in Chicago at the time of the fair and lured a bunch of people to his murder castle (he be snatchin’ yo’ people up!), but the events didn’t weigh heavily on the fair itself or on the atmosphere surrounding it. No alarm bells went off anywhere in Chicago as a result of his, um, unsavory indiscretions.

Still, there is a lot of interesting stuff here, information specific to the world’s fair, and it is fun to learn new things. For example, the Chicago Columbian Exposition exudes a long list of firsts: it saw the invention of the world’s first ferris wheel, it led the nation in its first public observance of the Pledge of Allegiance, and it helped to establish alternating current as the industry standard for electricity distribution. Even that awful snake charmer song has its origins in the Chicago World’s Fair.

While writing this review, I’ve come to learn that Leonardo DiCaprio, that beautiful man with the screaming cherry tomato head on a toothpick body, is producing the film adaptation, and will also play the role of serial killer H. H. Holmes. For this I am pleased....more

One thing I’ve noticed about a lot of young adult books and coming-of-age movies is a certain generational disconnect between the protagonist and hisOne thing I’ve noticed about a lot of young adult books and coming-of-age movies is a certain generational disconnect between the protagonist and his forebears. I guess in a lot of ways this is like noticing the absence of Indian food from a French cuisine cookbook, because why would anyone expect otherwise? If a story is to feature the youth perspective, then it should follow logically that his parents’ thoughts, ideas, and motivations factor into the story only peripherally. Right, Mikey? But in Something Wicked This Way Comes, that gap is bridged to a really interesting end.

Something Wicked is the story of two kids scrambling to be a day, a month, a year older, and an aging parent reflecting on the nostalgia of his youth and perhaps wishing to shave a few years off his own accumulated tree rings. The desire here, in the former to be older and in the latter to be younger, serves to drive the characters’ behavior but does so at the expense of sound judgment; and the desire—not unlike Macbeth’s desire to become king—is shown to be inextricably bound to a sense of malevolence on account of that clouded judgment. In fact, the very title of this novel harks back to the opening scene of Macbeth, in which a witch (in which a witch!) intimates the evil nature residing in the main character, and I think that line subsequently calls attention to the potential within each of us for evil to be realized, provided we let it.

The other thing I liked about this novel was Bradbury’s writing, which is almost entirely atmospheric and metaphorical.

Deep forests, dark caves, dim churches, half-lit libraries were all the same, they tuned you down, they dampened your ardour, they brought you to murmurs and soft cries for fear of raising up phantom twins of your voice which might haunt corridors long after your passage.

The imagery of the phantom twin as metaphor for an echo is pretty brilliant here, and Bradbury repeats this feat throughout the book. It probably also helped, with regard to timing, that I read this book in October, as the story takes place in the same month, for the descriptive voice seemed to lend an extra layer of reality to the story.

Something I did not care for, however, was a scene at the end in which (view spoiler)[Will’s dad essentially beats the crap out of his son in an attempt to get him to “laugh” (in order to destroy the curse of the Illustrated Man) (hide spoiler)]. I don’t know about you, but I get riled up when someone simply says to me, “Lighten up, dude.” Because, don’t fucking tell me to lighten up. I could not imagine someone clocking me over the head, boxing my ears, and slapping my face as a forceful means of conjuring a smile. I bet you would not be very happy if someone were to do that to you, right? And what’s good enough for you, is good enough for me.

One of the nice things about being stoned is the added dimension of humor or profundity that otherwise inconsequential things can assume in our impresOne of the nice things about being stoned is the added dimension of humor or profundity that otherwise inconsequential things can assume in our impression of them. I remember once having my mind blown at the idea of language, and how any two unrelated people, having been raised in the same country and while having no connection at all to each other, or there being any crossover among those who have taught or influenced them, can meet each other one day and have a mutually intelligible conversation. Fascinating, right? Well, no not really, but it sure as hell seems fascinating when you’re high.

I feel as though the only way I could have read this book and found it as funny and profound as other readers found it is if I were completely and totally baked.

Everything Is Illuminated is essentially comprised of two narratives interwoven in a nonlinear arrangement. The first is the account of a small Jewish settlement in the Ukraine which, along with most of its quirky inhabitants, is wiped out by the invading Nazis in 1941. The “writer” of this section is a fictionalized version of Foer himself, who is a direct descendant of some of these villagers. The second narrative is that of a present-day Ukrainian who recounts his experiences with Foer as they try to locate a mysterious woman who Foer believes helped his family escape that aforementioned invasion. The Ukrainian, whose name is Alex, is hired by the fictional Foer as a translator in his endeavors.

While Alex is the source of much of the book’s comedy in his unintentional misuse of the English language, the comedic value stemming from this quickly ran dry for me. I think there is also an absurdity with which Foer describes the ancestral characters in the Ukrainian village (called Trachimbrod) but to me most of the quirkiness seemed forced and unnatural, and ruined what could have provided an endearing element to the story. I mean, we’re talking about a village wherein characters collect each other’s tears in thimbles and send each other pieces of string that match the length of their body parts in order that their recipients be assuaged of any fear that their loved ones have “changed.” (Blech.)

And then there are the sentences, the ones I think are meant to sound deep and awe-inspiring but which only come across as shallow and trite in my non-Coloradan state of sobriety. (Sorry, Coloradans, but I guess that’s your thing now.) Sentences, for example, like these!

We burned with love for ourselves, all of us, starters of the fire we suffered—our love was the affliction for which only our love was the cure.

They reciprocated the great and saving lie—that our love for things is greater than our love for our love for things—willfully playing the parts they wrote for themselves, willfully creating and believing fictions necessary for life.

She never ran from his fists, but took them, went to them, certain that her bruises were not marks of violence, but of violent love.

The Kolker was trapped in his body—like a love note in an unbreakable bottle, whose script never fades or smudges, and is never read by the eyes of the intended lover—forced to hurt the one with whom he wanted most to be gentle.

Yes, there is a lot of talk of love in this book. (I think JSF wrote it before he got himself hitched.)

Anyway, there is a section toward the end of the novel during which Alex’s grandfather reveals an atrocity that occurred in his presence, and in which he was involved, and that revelation was very heartfelt and exemplifies, possibly, what JSF can be good at. But it wasn’t enough to rescue this book from its overall effect of having kind of irritated the crap out of me....more

I used to have a customer with Tourette’s. Back when I was a teenage supermarket teller, a million and a half years ago, she used to come through my lI used to have a customer with Tourette’s. Back when I was a teenage supermarket teller, a million and a half years ago, she used to come through my line routinely. At the time, I didn’t reflect much on her condition other than that I assumed it must be tough for her occasionally, but how tough it really was I considered only in the vaguest sense, to the extent that I considered it at all. (Sorry, lady, but I was 17 and had a whole slew of 17 year-old thoughts to preoccupy myself with.) She seemed to handle it in stride, though, or least this was my impression of our brief bi-weekly interactions—I certainly don’t remember there being any social awkwardness. It probably helped, too, that she never made any apologies for her outbursts.

So it was interesting for me, with Motherless Brooklyn, to experience life through the first-person perspective of Lionel Essrog, a man with, not only Tourette’s, but also its oft-accompanying sidekick, obsessive-compulsive disorder. With the little foreknowledge I have of these syndromes, I’m not able to say whether the novel faithfully represents them, but I’d like to think it does. Aside from the neuropsychiatric issues, Essrog also has a fascinating character history. Inexplicably orphaned at a young age, he grows up in a tough Brooklyn neighborhood and is recruited by a low-level Italian mobster whose eventual murder serves as the basis for the book’s detective-story plot. Essrog’s physical and verbal tics—which are conspicuously present throughout the investigation—do not impede the reader’s enjoyment of the novel, as his internal dialogue remains unhindered by the disorder (other than expressing an oncoming urge to shout or tap or straighten or poke), all of which I believe is consistent with the way Tourette’s presents in its sufferers. What’s more, Essrog’s tics almost endear the reader to him. I felt a kinship with the misunderstood, relatively lonely man who is driven by a misguided sense of loyalty in the search for his mentor’s killer.

Being at its core a mystery/crime thriller, Motherless Brooklyn at times falls prey to some of the clichés of the genre, but Lethem succeeds in transcending this label by writing with, I don’t know, heart or something. Essorg’s world, touched as it is by inner-city dealings and by mob activity, is still somewhat insular and claustrophobic. It’s his relationship to the elements of this tiny world, however, that drive his motivations and make this book among the more interesting crime novels I’ve read in a while....more

It is clear from reading In Cold Blood that not only is Philip Seymour Hoffman an excellent writer, but he is also an in-depth researcher. Every lineIt is clear from reading In Cold Blood that not only is Philip Seymour Hoffman an excellent writer, but he is also an in-depth researcher. Every line in this book is painstakingly detailed and therein, as they say, is the devil. Well, the devil had me hooked from start to finish.

Beginning with a day-in-the-life of the Clutter family shortly before four of its members were slain, Mr. Hoffman presents the real-life tale of the murders (as well as its aftermath) in a somewhat nonlinear fashion, skipping past the killings themselves to account for the daily activities and whereabouts of their perpetrators—Dick Hickock and Perry Smith—until finally revealing, once Hickock and Smith are caught, the goings-on at the Clutter family home on the night of the murders. All of this, I think, adds to the intensity of the storytelling and maintains the suspense necessary to move the narrative along.

The Clutter family home in Holcomb, KS, site of the November 15, 1959 murders.

Though the writing is technically perfect, and someone (like Trudi) might come onto this review and yell at me for having attributed to it an incorrect number of stars, it is difficult for me to award that fifth star in cases where the book fails to rock my world, emotionally speaking. In other words, a book has to have its way with me—it needs to seduce me and whisper into my ear, and even making breakfast for me in the morning wouldn’t hurt. But these are just explanatory ramblings, and they are mostly unnecessary. Because this really is one helluva book.

In doing some research of my own I have discovered that Mr. Hoffman was not alone in his procurement of the details for this book. His good friend Catherine Keener, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, accompanied him to the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, where the murders took place. He did this, presumably, to maximize the information-garnering potential for his manuscript. But oddly enough, Keener is not credited anywhere in the novel as having made any contribution to it whatsoever.

My mom has always said that an involuntary shudder—a shiver going up your spine, if you will—indicates someone having just walked over your grave. ThaMy mom has always said that an involuntary shudder—a shiver going up your spine, if you will—indicates someone having just walked over your grave. That cold spot you pass through when walking from the living room into the foyer? That’s not a draft of unheated air coming from upstairs (cold air sinks, you’ll recall)—no, that’s a ghost. And the message written in blood on your bathroom mirror this morning? Well, er, let’s just ignore that for the time being. But really, what is our obsession with the paranormal or the supernatural? What makes it so fascinating even to those of us who don’t believe in it?

Eleanor Vance isn’t sure she believes in it, and yet she agrees to spend a summer at an unoccupied house purported to be haunted. Eleanor reminds me of the unnamed narrator from Rebecca. She is insecure, introverted, and often finds herself fantasizing about her current and future situations. Dreams keep us sane, though, right? Or is the descent toward instability a more slippery path than we’d like to think?

Eleanor is both intrigued by and simultaneously frightened by the concept of solitude. Being an introvert, some of her favorite fantasies involve being on her own, secluded from the unwelcome intrusion of others. But after a few nights in Hill House, maybe being alone isn’t such a grand idea. What induces fear in Eleanor and the other guests of Hill House is their inability to reconcile observed phenomena with fact-based logic at the moment it occurs. They encounter something for which an explanation cannot be immediately provided and their minds are unable to cope. So what happens when these unexplainable occurrences no longer induce fear? Has the fear been somehow conquered? Or is there something more sinister in the fact that the need to formulate logical explanation for the otherwise unexplainable is no longer pressing?

Unlike this guy, I do not believe in spooks. But when the fight-or-flight response associated with fear is triggered in a secure setting—you are home with your significant other and the doors are locked, or you are at a Spooky World funhouse where you know the scares are manufactured—the adrenaline jolt can be a pretty fun thing to experience. And this book is a pretty fun thing to experience because Jackson’s choice to limit the perspective of the protagonist is effective at heightening the senses. Eleanor doesn’t always know what’s going on around her, so neither does the reader. Not only is the line between the living and the dead somewhat blurred, but so is the line separating Eleanor’s internal ventures from that which she perceives externally. It is suffocatingly frightful, I say.

So for those who don’t believe in ghosts, how many of you would be willing to spend a few nights in a house considered haunted by restless spirits? After all, you don’t even believe in restless spirits, so what is there to be afraid of? Except, how would you feel if people refused to believe in you?...more

Whoever designed the cover of this novel and came up with its title (because I refuse to believe either of thesePreconcetti sventato ancora una volta!

Whoever designed the cover of this novel and came up with its title (because I refuse to believe either of these disasters were Jess Walter’s doing) must have had one thing in mind: make this book appear to be as much of a chick-lit beach read as possible. And yes, while there are certainly elements of the chick-lit beach read here—some tender relationships, a sprinkle of sentimentality, a romance or twelve—it would be highly unfair to categorize it as so, because this book smashes that label to pieces and even transcends whichever other label one might try to apply to it. Beat that, labels!

Walter is a skilled writer. For such a short book with its surprisingly large cast of characters, including (believe it or not) Richard Burton, Walter manages to do draw out each of them fully and beautifully, flaws and all. Traversing from post-war Italy to modern-day Hollywood and back again, the plot is expertly constructed. Though it does, at times, meander into predictable territory, it never stays there long, and the care with which Walter crafts the relationships among his characters—whether it be between a mother and her son, a young man and his comrade, or a widow and her never-forgotten flame—is a care reminiscent of that shown by Krauss in The History of Love. In fact, I think both novels succeed on a similar level (besides shattering my preconceptions), which is to address the often competing themes of desire and responsibility, imagining the possibilities of a life-that-could-have-been while ultimately reconciling it with the life-that-is.

But also, yes. It is a love story:

And the robot loves his master, alien loves his saucer, Superman loves Lois, Lex, and Lana, Luke loves Leia (till he finds out she’s his sister), and the exorcist loves the demon even as he leaps out the window with it, in full soulful embrace, as Leo loves Kate and they both love the sinking ship, and the shark—God, the shark loves to eat, which is what the mafioso loves, too—eating and money and Paulie and omertà—the way the cowboy loves his horse, loves the corseted girl behind the piano bar, and sometimes loves the other cowboy, as the vampire loves night and neck, and the zombie—don’t even start with the zombie, sentimental fool; has anyone ever been more lovesick than a zombie, that pale, dull metaphor for love, all animal craving and lurching, outstretched arms, his very existence a sonnet about how much he wants those brains? This, too, is a love story.

You know what? I think this play is the Shakespearean equivalent of Three’s Company, a laugh-track comedy with goofball characters and preposterous siYou know what? I think this play is the Shakespearean equivalent of Three’s Company, a laugh-track comedy with goofball characters and preposterous situations that trigger a chain of events you can see coming a mile away. We’re talking here about a play in which a woman masquerades as a man (pretty much for the hell of it), deceiving everyone into believing she’s a dude without testes—because how else do you, in the absence of injectable testosterone products, convince people you’re a dude other than to pretend you’ve been castrated as a young boy? She manages even to convince a wealthy countess of her “maleness,” inadvertently eliciting the countess’s romantic interests, this of course culminating in a wacky situation indeed because the girl herself is in love with the duke she is working for—the very duke who sent her to the countess in the first place to procure the countess’s love for him! OMFG!

But this is a play in five acts, guys, so the Jack Tripper shenanigans don’t end there. The testicle-free girl has a brother—that’s all, just a brother (there are no identical twins anywhere in this play)—and that alone is enough to exacerbate confusion to the extreme. Because by the dual condition that A) she has a brother; and B) she is pretending to be a dude; it must therefore follow that C) she looks exactly like him. And when I say “exactly,” I mean precisely. The two are virtually indistinguishable from one another—even without having had Adam’s apple reduction surgery. Amazing, right? So now we have a girl being mistaken for her brother, her brother being mistaken for her, and this occurring even among people who know the brother intimately. One had spent every day of the last three months with this guy and still thought his sister were he! Can’t you just imagine this whole thing playing out at the Regal Beagle or something? Mr. Furley’s wide eyes darting back and forth in surprise, Chrissy scratching her head in disbelief, Jack hiding under the table, Janet watering her plants.

But all ribbing aside, I actually liked this play. Not as much as Shakespeare’s tragedies, of course—I honestly do believe this particular play is heavier on entertainment value than it is on literary value, but I’m the kind of guy who enjoys a good Three’s Company rerun. Irrespective of situational believability or plot predictability, when it is executed well enough, I am wholly entertained....more

Liking this book makes no sense. Not only are its characters subjected to like, the bleakest set of circumstances ever, but then those circumstances aLiking this book makes no sense. Not only are its characters subjected to like, the bleakest set of circumstances ever, but then those circumstances are presented to the reader with such an alarming degree of authorial detachment that you almost have to wonder whether Mistry himself—fed up with the unending series of hardships his characters are required to endure—didn’t just raise his arms in the air and say, “Oh, fuck it.” And yet I could not tear myself away from this train wreck.

A Fine Balance presents neither a balanced nor a very fine account of a group of four Indian residents during the late 1970s. These folks, heralding from different castes and backgrounds, are tossed together by their individually perturbing situations to forge an unlikely bond—not unlike the bond formed among the cast members of Big Brother or The Real World except that in this case, the glamorous hot tub around which the characters congregate is replaced by a broken propane stove and a rusty tap from which water can be drawn only occasionally. For those not brushed up on their political history, the late 1970s saw India under the rule of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi who, though largely considered one of India’s greatest prime ministers on account of her centralizing policies (the constitutionality of which, I suppose, could be debated), was certainly not among those in the author’s favor. Throughout the story, Mistry’s characters are continually being caught in Gandhi’s crossfire even while remaining mostly oblivious to the political climate surrounding them. We get the distinct impression that Mistry is trying really hard to keep his own opinions from interfering with the story, but it is pretty obvious dude’s got some serious bitterness issues to work out.

Anyway, this book is not without its flaws. A few characters bump into each other under repeatedly, under no plausible pretext other than pure coincidence, and this coincidence occurs frequently enough, especially toward the end of the novel, that the reader has to remind himself that this is India we’re talking about here, right? The one with a population density of a thousand people per square mile? Mistry makes us feel like this might be an India under glass, where the characters are tiny steel balls and Mistry is controlling the flippers.

This book is good, though. For all its doom and gloom, I still see the hope in its pages. Three of its characters are clothing tailors, and one of the repeated themes is something about how life is like the patchwork of a quilt, the good parts and the bad parts being sewn together—but if one were to try to remove the bad parts, he’d only end up with holes in his life.

(I suppose you’d have to think positively when you share a crapper with 150 other villagers.)...more

I’m rating this book two stars only on a technicality…which is that technically speaking, this book sucks.

Ursula Todd is an English-born nobody. BornI’m rating this book two stars only on a technicality…which is that technically speaking, this book sucks.

Ursula Todd is an English-born nobody. Born into a large wealthy family, there isn’t a whole lot about her that stands out. She shares a closeness with one or two of her siblings, but overall she has a pretty meek personality and remains largely invisible most of her life—with the caveat that “most of her life” in Ursula’s case actually means “most of her lives” because this bitch keeps on dropping dead and coming back again.

Life After Life is a book that focuses on Ursula’s slow build-up, over the course of multiple lives (because it takes her hundreds of tries to get it right), to assassinating Adolf Hitler. This is not a spoiler, by the way. The assassination occurs on page one. The hundreds of lives it takes for her to get to that point occur on pages two through five hundred twenty-nine. And that includes the following exits, stage left (spoiler alert if you’re a Final Destination fan): umbilical cord strangulation, asphyxiation by natural gas, blunt force trauma by a falling brick wall, blunt force trauma by a homicidal husband, suicide by cyanide capsule, stroke (or whatever the hell that was on the park bench), falling off a roof, Spanish flu, drowning, Blitz bombing. Some of these happen repeatedly because it takes Ursula several lives to figure out that she’s doing something wrong and needs to adjust her strategy. She can’t exactly remember her previous deaths, but she does know something is amiss and can occasionally execute a modification to her preordained path and avoid that outcome...only to have a different mortal outcome occur in its stead, of course. (But truthfully, most of the time the modification occurs on its own without her having to do anything at all. Magic!)

And that is what is most bothersome to me, I think (besides her dull personality). It is exhausting to read about a woman dying over and over again only to be reborn right back where she started, and all without seeming to have any input into anything whatsoever. She just goes along with the program, a plastic bag beaten about by the wind. All the dumb things she has done along the way, all the idiots she enters into relationships with, it all starts over, and then you start to get confused as to who’s alive and who’s dead in this new life of hers and is she still with this person? Is she a mother this time around? A spinster? And then you start to realize that who cares. It doesn’t matter. She’ll just die again anyway. In fact the only time she ever starts to make real decisions is toward the end of the novel after she has lived a ludicrous number of lives, and are we supposed to be at this point rooting for her? What most of us have just one lifetime to figure out she gets hundreds, and even so it’s still not enough? One of my favorite of Ursula’s decisions is that after dying a bunch of times in the Blitz, she decides to spend her next life somewhere safer and moves from London to fucking Munich.

Good grief.

Also, the character interactions, which is something I usually enjoy in novels, is pretty nonexistent here. Characters don’t have meaningful interactions in Life After Life; they merely quip and provide one-liners before the narrative moves onto the next scene (which is often just as dull). Reading this book ultimately became tiresome to me, which is not really how you want your reading experience to go.

Looking at the ratings for this novel it’s clear I’m in the minority, which is why I felt a certain pressure to isolate the components of it that irritated me or caused me to dislike it, but the truth is I don’t really know for sure if it was any of these things in particular or if it was the whole package to blame, but the bottom line is that this book was just not for me....more

It is often the roll your eye moments of books or movies that weaken the reading/viewing experience for me, but I have to be honest in saying that I cIt is often the roll your eye moments of books or movies that weaken the reading/viewing experience for me, but I have to be honest in saying that I cannot always define what exactly triggers those eye rolls. I think sometimes it is the predictability of the plot, other times the outrageousness of coincidence or lack of plausibility. If I get the impression I am being manipulated to feel a certain way, I bristle and balk. But what happens when a book commits one or more of these grave errors and I don’t roll my eyes? What was different that time? Did the book just happen to execute things more effectively? Did it possess some other, albeit unrelated, redeeming quality that allowed me to overlook certain flaws? Or does it really all come down to my state-of-mind at the time of reading?

I do not have the answers to these questions, but I do know that I really enjoyed Night Film—despite its main character being a bit of a retard (not to mention a lousy father), despite motivations that stem more from a sake of convenience than from any reasonable source, and despite the intrusion of the wild and zany into what is otherwise a reality-based investigative thriller.

So what did I like about this book? I liked the writing, I liked the supporting characters—not just the peripheral ones but also the ones who exist only in the ethereal sense. I enjoyed the twists and turns, which are perfectly timed and manage to prevent some elements from being revealed until the final page. I liked that not everything is ultimately revealed and I like what that says about who we are, as readers, and what we want out of a story. There may be two sides to a coin but at the end of the day it is the same coin, and maybe you need both sides to complete a picture. Or maybe that picture is never really complete because it exists in an ever-changing reality and all you can do is theorize and deduce and grab hold of whichever belief helps you sleep best at night, hoping nothing will come along later to challenge that belief, but still preparing yourself for that possibility because it almost always happens eventually, one way or the other, doesn’t it?

My apologies for the vagueness there but when you finish the book you’ll understand. Or maybe you will just roll your eyes and think, “whatever, man.” Either way....more